5 Games You’ll Love If You Like Pokemon Go

It is safe for us all to say that Pokemon Go has gone from a simple game to a cultural phenomenon catching hold of everyone, from children to the elderly. Everywhere you look now people are chasing down invisible animated creatures through their phone screens. But the real question now is, what games can rival Pokemon Go and how do I get my hands on them? Well, we have come up with five Ar (augmented reality) games we think give Go a run for their money. But there are a couple key steps involving you, too. Having a good phone and a great connection (and data package) is part and parcel to making this all work, so do the leg work first and make sure you have everything you need to experience these games in their full glory. Here are 5 games that will help you forget about Pokemon Go. (Meaning, all these games will use your camera, GPS, and augmented reality to make them feel more immersive than normal phone games.)

Okay, so it is nice Pokemon Go has people all out and about, but what if instead of catching Pocket Monsters, you actually learned some stuff about your surroundings? Trust me, it is not as lame as it sounds. Knowing stuff is cool, that’s what makes us geeks.

That is just what Field Trip does. Teaches you stuff. Uses your GPS to tell you all the cool stuff around you and highlight it and then you can go and the app will tell you cool stuff about the spot. Nice way to get out and to learn more about your own town or city, while also being active.

Some might think a fitness tracking app does not belong on a list about “games” but I will tell you why it is and why it deserves to be. Yes, The Walk is a fitness tracker game where you walk around, but what sets it apart is the story within the tracker itself.

You see, you are not just walking around. You are carrying a very serious (albeit invisible) package around that needs to be delivered, and the game takes about three months of walking to finish. To tell you any more would ruin what makes it cool, but it does take walking from being lame to feeling very James Bond.

Ingress is a game that may be a bit too lofty and ambitious for some, which is why it is not placing higher. The high concept of Ingress is, it uses your camera and GPS to place “portals” around your locals that you need to defend and take control of (think a “tower defense” game in real life and you kind of have an idea of what Ingress is like).

Thing is, Pokemon Go has been pulling big numbers these last few months, but Ingress has had 7 million players across the globe since 2015, so it was one step ahead of Go at all times. Ingress may have a little bit of a learning curve, but once you understand it, the game sucks you in and puts you in a sci-fi world quite unlike any people have experienced before. Plau, working with others is what makes ingress so unforgettable.

Again, just like Go (and all the games mentioned on this list) Clandestine uses your phone as a screen for augmented reality and turns your normal life into an insane battle.

Using your surroundings, you see aliens attacking and have to use your arsenal of provided weapons to save your (in my case, front yard) from an attack by vicious aliens. See. everyone thinks GO is the first, TRUE augmented reality game, and that could not be further from the truth. Plus, this one and a few others let you destroy stuff, which is way more fun than catching things in my opinion.

Okay, I want you to take a minute to think about how Pokemon Go works. You aim your camera and capture small, animated, monsters for your collection. In Zombies Everywhere augmented reality is taken to a new extreme.

ZOMBIES!

You look around with your camera and instead of Pokemon, you have zombies, well, everywhere. Cool thing is, in this game, they give you weapons. So how about instead of passively hunting Pokemon with a camera you actually kill zombies around you? Yeah, seeing a zombie crawling out of your floor and then blasting it to bits?

Yeah, it doesn’t get much cooler than that.

The best part is, we are simply on the doorstep of augmented reality. I, for one, cannot wait to see where this stunning technology takes us (literally and figuratively) in the next decade.